Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (more commonly known as
the U.S.S.R.
or the Soviet Union) was established following the social revolutions
that took place in Russia in 1917.
It was the first nation in history to be
founded on the principles of socialist philosophy, which holds that the ownership
of a nation's resources should not be owned solely by privileged individuals
but by all its citizens.

During its existence (1922-91), the Soviet Union was the world's
largest country in area and the third largest in population (after China and
India).
Spanning two continents, Europe and Asia, it extended from the Baltic
Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and from the Arctic Ocean
in the north to the mountains and deserts of Central Asia in the south.

In February 1917 (March by the present-day calendar), Russia's last emperor,
Czar Nicholas II, was overthrown and a provisional (temporary) government
was formed.
In October 1917 (November by the present-day calendar), the provisional
government was itself overthrown by a group of Communist revolutionaries known
as the Bolsheviks.
In 1922 they officially established the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
Ruling as a one-party dictatorship, the Communists (as
the Bolsheviks became known) exercised near-total control over all aspects
of the country's political, economic, and intellectual life.
They reorganized
Russia's backward economy, emphasized industrial and scientific progress,
and built up the world's largest army.

After World War II (1939-45), the Soviet government followed an expansionist
foreign policy that frequently brought it into conflict with the United States,
its only rival superpower among the world's nations.
However, it was the failure
of the Soviet economic system, along with growing ethnic nationalism, that
brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

The Union Republics

The Soviet Union was made up of 15 union (member) republics.
The Russian
Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.) was by far the largest.
It
covered about 75 percent of the total Soviet land area, which made it about
twice the size of the United States.
It also contained the nation's two largest
cities--Moscow, the capital, and Leningrad (present-day St.
Petersburg).

The other republics were Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania along the Baltic
Sea; Belorussia (present-day Belarus), Ukraine, and Moldavia (present-day
Moldova) in the far west; Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the Caucasus
region in the southwest; and Kazakhstan, Kirghizia (present-day Kyrgyzstan),
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

Life in the Soviet Union

The Soviet population was unevenly distributed over the land.
The European
part of the country was the most densely populated.
It contained about two-thirds
of the Soviet people, even though it contained only about one-quarter of its
total area.
By contrast, Soviet Asia, although much larger in area but less
fertile, had vast stretches of land that were only thinly populated.

All together, more than 90 different national and ethnic groups lived in
the Soviet Union.
Slavic peoples made up about 75 percent of the total population.
Russians were the largest Slavic group, with slightly more than half the total
Soviet population, followed by the Ukrainians and Belorussians (now called
Belarusians).
Turkic peoples made up the second largest group.
Most of the
Soviet Turkic peoples lived in Central Asia.
They included the Uzbeks, the
Kazakhs, the Kirghiz (now Kyrgyzes), and the Turkmen (also called Turkmens
or Turkomans).
The Azerbaijanis, another Turkic people, inhabited part of
the mountainous Caucasus region to the west of the Caspian Sea.
Other non-Slavic
peoples included the Moldavians (now Moldovans), Armenians, Georgians, Tajiks,
and the Baltic peoples of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Religion.

From the time of the 1917 revolutions, the Soviet
government was strongly anti-religious.
The Communist Party regarded religion
as its enemy.
Many churches were destroyed or turned into museums.
But during
World War II the government recognized the people's need for religion, and
some freedom was restored.
Years later, freedom of religion was limited once
again.
Despite the restrictions, many Soviet people continued to practice
their faiths.

Most East Slavs traditionally belonged to the (Christian) Eastern Orthodox
Church, the largest religious body.
Other Christian peoples included Armenians
(who belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church), Georgians (members of the
Georgian Orthodox Church), Lithuanians (primarily Roman Catholics), and Estonians
and Latvians (mostly Lutherans).

The Turkic peoples, who were chiefly Muslims, made up the second largest
religious community.
Buddhism was practiced by some peoples in Soviet Asia.
The Soviet Union also had one of the world's largest Jewish communities.
But
after the nation dissolved, large numbers of Soviet Jews emigrated to Israel
and the United States.

Education.

The Soviet school system was controlled, indirectly,
by the Communists.
They believed that one of the primary functions of education
was to train people to serve the state (nation).
Because the Soviet Union
put so much emphasis upon industrial and scientific progress, the training
of skilled workers, technicians, engineers, and scientists was the main goal
of the educational system.

Soviet children could begin their education in kindergarten when they were
3 years old.
There were crèches (day nurseries) to care for children
under 3 while their parents worked.
These nurseries were always subject to
state and Communist Party supervision.

At the age of 7, Soviet children were required to enter a regular school.
The government aimed to provide ten years of free, compulsory education: three
years of elementary school, five years of junior high school, and two years
of secondary school.
But in the farm districts, children did not usually advance
beyond junior high school.

Education was carefully regulated, and there was little room for individuality
on the part of students or teachers.
Qualifying examinations were centrally
prepared and were designed to allow only the brightest students to go on to
further academic work.
Many students went from junior high school to a labor
reserve school, where they trained for jobs in industry.
Students in the secondary
schools often visited factories to observe, talk to the workers, or get some
training.
When they graduated at the age of 17 or 18, many were assigned to
industrial jobs.

Admission to Soviet technical and professional
colleges and universities was by competitive examination.
The time spent varied
from two years in teacher-training institutes to five or six years in engineering
and medical institutes and universities.
Students who did extremely well in
their studies could go on for advanced degrees.
The Communist Party also operated
its own schools for training in the theories of Communism and in political
work.

Village Life.

Villages were long the home of the great majority
of the people, most of whom were peasant farmers.
The traditional Russian
farm village consisted of a cluster of wooden houses made of logs.
Ukrainian
village homes were whitewashed and colorfully painted.
Some of these log houses
can still be seen in villages.

City Life.

One result of the 1917 revolutions was the movement
of people from the countryside to the cities.
By 1991 about two-thirds of
the Soviet people lived in urban areas.
The movement was due to the need for
workers in growing industries.
However, many cities suffered from a severe
housing shortage.
A residence permit was required for those wishing to live
in the cities.
These were especially difficult to obtain for Moscow and Leningrad.

A
typical city family in Soviet Europe lived in a two-room apartment of
its own or shared one with another family.
The apartment might be in an older
building or in one of the newer high-rise housing complexes, usually built
on the city's outskirts.
Most of the housing was built and operated by the
government, which charged low rents.

Often both parents in a family worked while their children attended school
or a day nursery.
Shopping was time-consuming, requiring stops at a number
of different stores.
Prices were set by the government, which operated most
of the stores.
Long waiting lines were common for sought-after items of food
and clothing.
Many consumer goods were in short supply and of poor quality.

Sports and Recreation.

As in most other areas of Soviet life,
sports were organized by the government.
Soccer was probably the single most
popular sport, although volleyball, basketball, and lapta--a traditional Russian sport similar to baseball--were also
enjoyed.
The Turkic peoples of Soviet Central Asia, many of them skilled horsemen,
played games similar to polo.
Chess, a national pastime, was played by young
and old, and Soviet chess grand masters dominated most international matches.

The Soviets also excelled in track-and-field events, gymnastics, swimming,
ice-skating, and ice-hockey.
Government-supported teams and athletes regularly
won medals in the Olympic Games and other international sports competitions.

Party-led organizations also played a very important part in the education
and recreation of Soviet youth.
Groups were known as the Young Octobrists
(for 7- to 10-year-olds), the Pioneers (ages 10 to 14), and the Young Communist
League, or Komsomol (ages 14 until admission to full party membership
at 28).
About half the students in the Soviet Union belonged to these organizations.
They
combined party training with the extracurricular activities provided by scouting
in other countries.
Sometimes the groups worked on special projects of economic
value, such as bringing in the harvests.
Membership in these groups was not
required, but it was expected and was helpful to Soviet society.

Structure of the Soviet Government

Supreme political power in the Soviet Union was held by the general secretary
of the Communist Party and other top party leaders.
All important decisions
were first made by the Communist leadership and then carried out by the government.
Membership in the party long had been the main road to advancement in Soviet
professional as well as political life.

The Supreme Soviet, or legislature, consisted of two houses, the Council
of the Union, based on proportional representation, and the Council of the
Republics, in which each republic had one vote.
Both councils were appointed
by the leaders of the republics.
Legislation passed by the Council of the
Union had to be approved by the Council of the Republics in order to go into
effect.

At the bottom of the party organization were the local party officials.
They elected delegates to the All-Union Party Congress, which was supposed
to meet at least once every five years.
The Congress, in theory, elected the
members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which supervised
party affairs when the Congress was not in session.
In truth, the Congress
merely approved the choices of the party leaders.

A
few powerful members of the Central Committee formed the Politburo, which
guided the party.
In general, the Politburo led by consensus, or agreement.
The everyday activities of the party were handled by the Secretariat, which
also included some Politburo members.
The general secretary served as head
of the Politburo and the Secretariat and was, in effect, the real leader of
the country.

The Soviet Economic System

The Soviet economic system was based on public rather than private ownership
of property.
The government owned and controlled the land, natural resources,
factories, and the means of production--all of which were formally subject
to central planning from Moscow.
The government dictated the country's economic
goals, directed what goods and services to produce, in what amounts and at
what prices, and allotted the necessary resources accordingly.

Goals.

During most of the Soviet period, the government stressed
the growth of heavy industry.
In 1913, Russia was primarily an agricultural
country.
By 1978 the value of industrial production and transportation was
more than five times that of agricultural production.
To bring about these
rapid changes, many people had to learn new skills and accept new jobs.
At
times Soviet citizens were told where to live and what type of work to do.
Even students often had to accept the jobs given them when they left school.
This helped transform the country into the world's second leading industrial
nation, after the United States.
Great factories were built in the Ural Mountains,
the Caucasus, Western Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East.
To transfer
workers from the farms to the factories and to feed them when they got there,
Soviet agriculture was organized into the collective system (see below).
As
a result of this great movement from farms to factories, cities grew rapidly.
New cities such as Magnitogorsk in the Urals, Rustavi in the Caucasus, and
Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Far East sprang up almost overnight.

Due to the Soviet emphasis on heavy industry, other areas of the economy
were neglected.
Heavy spending for military defense also absorbed much of
the country's resources.
The Soviet Union lagged far behind other industrialized
nations in the production of consumer goods and in its standard of living.
Under the highly centralized system, the economy suffered from inefficiency,
low worker productivity, waste, poor quality of goods, and shortages of many
foods.

Industrial Growth.

The Soviet Union ranked either first or
high among world leaders in the production of iron ore, coal, crude petroleum,
and natural gas.
It also had large reserves of manganese, copper, lead, chromium,
zinc, bauxite (aluminum ore), nickel, uranium, gold, and other minerals.

The Soviet Union began the large-scale development of heavy industry in
1928, with the first of its so-called Five-Year economic plans.
Manufacturing
eventually employed about 30 percent of the labor force.
The chief industrial
products included iron and steel, machinery, machine tools, tractors and other
motor vehicles, electrical equipment, construction materials, and mineral
fertilizers.
Other important manufactured goods were textiles and processed
foods.
Most of the major industrial areas were located in the western part
of the country and in the Ural Mountain region.
The Soviet Union produced
more steel than either the United States or Western Europe.

The Farm System.

Soviet agriculture, like industry, was highly
centralized, with two basic types of farms--the state farm and the collective.

The state farm (sovkhoz) was owned and operated
by the government and organized like an agricultural factory.
State farmworkers
received salaries from the government.

The collective farm (kolkhoz) included several
villages and the surrounding farmland.
The government leased the land to the
collective.
Farmers on a collective worked the land together, pooling their
equipment and other resources.
Produce was sold to the state, which set the
prices.

A
third and vital area of Soviet agriculture consisted of the small private
plots of land each citizen was allowed to cultivate.
Although these made up
only about 3 percent of the total land cultivated, they produced about one-third
of the country's meat, eggs, milk, and vegetables.

Soviet
agriculture had to produce not only food for the city population but also
materials for industry.
Fibers for textiles were especially important.
Flax,
used to make linen, was grown in Europe.
Cotton was grown by irrigation in
Central Asia.
Wool was produced in large quantities by the collectivized shepherds
(formerly nomads) of Central Asia and the Caucasus region.
The sheepskins
made warm winter hats and coats.

Trade.

Within the Soviet Union, almost all trade was in the
hands of the government.
State planning agencies controlled the exchange of
materials and products among factories in different parts of the country.
Retail sales were made by cooperative and state stores.
Only a small part
of the trade in meat, fruits, and vegetables was handled directly by collective
farms and farmers.
By controlling distribution and the prices of industrial
and consumer goods, the government could determine who received the goods,
as well as where and when.

With the spread of Soviet control over Eastern Europe after World War II,
a series of satellite nations (nations within a more powerful nation's sphere
of influence) entered the Soviet economic and political bloc.
Cuba entered
this trading group after 1960.
Almost three-fifths of all Soviet foreign trade
was with these nations.
The Soviet Union traded petroleum and raw materials
(iron ore, grain, and lumber) for machinery and consumer goods from industrial
Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Soviet machinery
and manufactured goods were exchanged for raw materials (ores and fibers)
and food products from the less developed nations of Latin America, Africa,
and Asia, including India.
Soviet trade with its satellites was controlled
by a Soviet-led organization known as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(COMECON).

History

Origins.

For hundreds of years before the Soviet Union was
created, Russia--by far the largest of the Soviet republics--had
been ruled by emperors, called czars.
The Russian economy was based almost
entirely on agriculture, and its labor force was made up chiefly of peasants,
known as serfs.
Serfs enjoyed no personal liberties and were bound to live
and work on the lands owned by the nobility.

Russia's concentration on agriculture had caused it to lag behind Western
nations in industrial development.
And the impoverished conditions of the
serfs inevitably led to their discontent.
In 1861, Czar Alexander II emancipated
(freed) the serfs and initiated other social changes.
But many people--notably
a rising number of socialists--believed his reforms were vastly inadequate,
and in 1881, Alexander was assassinated by revolutionaries.
But his successors,
Alexander III and Nicholas II, were even less accepting of reform.

Discontent among the people, therefore, was already high when Russia went
to war against Japan in 1904.
The Russo-Japanese War ended the following year
in a decisive victory for Japan.
With the country humiliated by the defeat,
the socialists found their first opportunity for revolutionary action.
They
organized Soviets (or councils) of Workers' Deputies, which prepared striking
workers for action and cooperated with other groups that opposed the czar.
This Revolution of 1905 was put down, but only after much bloodshed.
Czar
Nicholas II was forced to agree to the creation of an elected legislature,
the Duma, and to grant certain civil rights.
By doing so, he saved his throne.
But the seeds of a future revolution had been planted.
They would bear fruit
in the disorder caused by World War I (1914-18).

Reformers and Revolutionaries.

Opponents to czarist rule
included three main groups.
The Social Revolutionaries aimed at overthrowing
the czar through a peasant revolution.
The Social Democratic Labor Party,
which had been founded in 1898, saw the growing number of workers in the cities
as a means of achieving a revolution.
Middle-class liberals simply sought
to establish a parliamentary form of government based on a Western-style constitution.

Members of the Social Democratic Labor Party were followers of Karl Marx,
a German economic and social philosopher, who called for a workers' revolution
in order to create a Communist society.
The party was itself divided into
two branches: the Mensheviks (minority group) and the Bolsheviks (majority
group).
The Bolsheviks were led by Vladimir I.
Ulyanov, who took the name
Lenin.

The Revolutions of 1917.

When World War I began in 1914,
Russia entered the conflict on the side of the Allies, which also included
Britain and France.
Their opponents, the Central Powers, included Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

The war went badly for Russia.
Its army suffered disastrous defeats and
enormous casualties.
At home, food shortages led to unrest among workers in
the cities.
In February 1917 (March by the new calendar), strikes and demonstrations
erupted in the capital, Petrograd (the renamed St.
Petersburg).
Soldiers who
had been called out to stop the demonstrators joined them instead, taking
control of the city.

The Czar Abdicates.

On February 15, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated
(gave up the throne), and the Provisional Government was established by members
of the Duma.
The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was also formed
in Petrograd.
Additional soviets, including those representing peasants, were
soon established in other parts of the country.
The result was that Russia,
in effect, now had two governing bodies competing for the loyalty of the people.

The Provisional Government had promised political freedom, land reform,
and the election of an assembly to draw up a constitution for a new democratic
government.
Under pressure from Britain and France, it also pledged to continue
the war on the side of the Allies.

The decision to carry on with the war won the approval of most middle-class
liberals.
But it was unpopular among workers, soldiers, and peasants, who
wanted peace.
The slow pace of economic and political reform and new military
defeats further weakened the political position of the Provisional Government.
Following Bolshevik-led demonstrations in July 1917, Aleksandr Kerensky, a
Social Revolutionary, was named prime minister.
An attempt to overthrow Kerensky
was put down, partly with the aid of the Bolsheviks.
This won the Bolsheviks
support among workers at the expense of more moderate political groups.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks Take Power.

With upheaval at home
and many Russian troops at the front refusing to fight, the Provisional Government
faced a crisis.
Bolsheviks had already gained control of the Petrograd Soviet.
Their slogans "Peace, Land, and Bread!" and "All Power to the Soviets!" appealed to many ordinary Russians.
Deciding
that this was the time to seize power, Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, called
for the overthrow of the Provisional Government.
In October 1917 (November,
new style), soldiers, sailors, and armed workers captured key points in Petrograd
and arrested members of the Provisional Government.
Kerensky fled the country.
Having won the capital, the Bolsheviks quickly extended their control over
much of Russia.

The success of the Bolsheviks was due largely to Lenin's leadership, the
party's disciplined organization, and the lack of unity among their opponents.
They came to power without the support of a majority of the people.
When elections
for a constituent assembly were held, Bolsheviks received less than one-quarter
of the votes cast.
The assembly met only once, before it was disbanded by
troops loyal to the Bolsheviks.

The new government was named the Soviet of People's Commissars.
It was
headed by Lenin, with other top Bolshevik officials.
A secret police force,
the Cheka,
was organized to protect the government
against opposition.
The name Communist Party was adopted by the Bolsheviks
in 1918.
That same year the capital was moved to Moscow.
Lenin announced that
private property would be abolished, land redistributed, and workers given
control of industry.

Peace and Civil War.

One of Lenin's first goals was to end
Russia's participation in World War I.
To gain peace, he was forced to accept
a costly treaty with the Central Powers.
Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
(1918), Russia agreed to independence for the Baltic states and Finland and
gave up its territory in Poland and Ukraine.

Opposition to the Bolsheviks had begun soon after they took power.
By 1918
a full-scale civil war raged through much of Russia, between the armies of
the Communist government (the "Reds") and anti-Communist forces (the "Whites").
Troops from Britain, France, the United States, and other countries
intervened on the side of the Whites and occasionally took part in the fighting.
But they had little effect on the final outcome.
Russia also fought a brief
war (1920) with Poland over territorial claims.

Execution of the Czar.

The civil war ended in 1921 with a
victory for the Red Army, which had been organized by Leon Trotsky, one of
the Bolshevik leaders.
Among the many casualties of the conflict was the former
czar, Nicholas II, and his family, who were executed by the Communists in
1918.

The New Economic Policy.

Years of war, revolution, and civil
war had devastated Russia.
Famine and disease had killed millions.
Others,
unwilling to live under Communism, had emigrated.
In 1921, in order to restore
the economy, Lenin adopted the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Under the NEP, some
small manufacturers and shopkeepers were allowed to do business again, and
farmers were able to market their own produce.
Lenin saw this as only a temporary
step while building a Communist society.

The Rise of Stalin.

Lenin died in 1924.
Joseph Stalin, who
was general secretary of the Communist Party, gradually took over leadership
of the Soviet Union by killing or imprisoning those who opposed him.
One of
his chief opponents, Leon Trotsky, was expelled from the country and later
assassinated.
By 1929, Stalin had made himself the absolute ruler of the Soviet
Union.
He began the first Five-Year Plan for the development of Soviet heavy
industry and forced the peasants onto collective farms.
Peasant resistance
to forced collectivization led to a sharp drop in agricultural production.
A resulting famine killed millions of people in rural areas during the early
1930's.

Stalin's Purges.

In the mid-1930's, during the time known
as the Great Purge, Stalin had most of the remaining old Bolshevik leaders
executed, after staged trials on false charges of trying to overthrow the
government.
Millions of ordinary people were also arrested and sent to forced-labor
camps called gulags.
Many of these were located in the remotest regions of
Siberia.

World War II.

In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany
signed a non-aggression pact, under which each pledged not to attack the other.
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, setting off World War II, the
Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland.
In 1940 the Soviet Union took over part
of Finland after a short war (1939-40) and annexed the Baltic states--Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia.

In 1941, in spite of their pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
German
armies swept quickly across Soviet territory, nearly capturing Moscow.
Despite
their ultimate victory, the Soviet people suffered crushing personal losses.
As many as 27 million Soviet people--soldiers and civilians--died
in the war, which ended in 1945.

The Cold War.

After the war, Soviet troops liberated most
of Eastern Europe from the retreating Germans.
Stalin thus was in a position
to dominate the region.
Communist governments soon came to power in Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and eastern Germany.
The Soviet
Union's chief wartime allies, Britain and the United States, felt that the
Soviet Union had violated agreements, under which the peoples of Eastern Europe
were to be free to choose their own governments.
Because of this and other
disagreements, a period of hostility developed between the nations of the West
and the Soviet Union, which became known as the Cold War.

The KGB.

In the Soviet Union, postwar living conditions were
harsh.
Because of the war's destruction and Stalin's determination to strengthen
Soviet industry, food and other necessities were often scarce or unobtainable.
Order and security were maintained by the Cheka (later called the
Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD).
In 1954 this
widespread organization of secret police was incorporated into the larger
Committee for State Security, a government intelligence agency commonly known
as the KGB.

Khrushchev and Brezhnev.

Stalin's death in 1953 led to a
struggle for power.
Nikita Khrushchev eventually emerged as the Soviet leader.
Soon after taking office, the new premier admitted that there were fewer cattle,
sheep, and goats in the Soviet Union than there had been in 1928, before collectivization
began.
To remedy this, he provided higher payments to the collectives for
products delivered to the government.
He also authorized more frequent payments
to the farmers.
Under his leadership the collectives were consolidated into
fewer and bigger farms.
The farmers were given a voice in deciding what they
would grow, when, and on what fields.

In 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes and began a process known
as de-Stalinization.
Portraits and statues of the former leader were removed,
and places named after him--such as Stalingrad (now Volgograd)--were
renamed.
The Soviet people enjoyed somewhat more freedom of expression under
Khrushchev, who called for peaceful co-existence with the West.
But at the
same time, Khrushchev expanded Soviet influence in Africa and Asia.
He also
sent Soviet tanks into Hungary in 1956 to crush a revolt against Communist
rule.

The Soviet Union won world acclaim when, in 1957, it launched Sputnik I,
the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
But Khrushchev was criticized
by other Communist leaders for his handling of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis
with the United States, for the breakdown in Soviet relations with Communist
China, and for the failure of his agricultural policies.
In 1964 he was replaced
by Leonid Brezhnev.

Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union also continued its dominance of Eastern
Europe by putting down a reform movement in Czechoslovakia by force in 1968.
Relations with the United States improved under a policy of détente
(easing of tensions).
But U.S.-Soviet relations worsened after Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to support a locally unpopular Communist regime.

Brezhnev died in 1982.
He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who held power
until his death in 1984.
Andropov's successor, Konstantin Chernenko, died
in 1985 and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev as Communist Party head.
/p>

The Gorbachev Era.

The most far-reaching changes in the history
of the Soviet Union were undertaken in the late 1980's by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Sweeping reforms of the traditional economic system were begun in 1987.
They
limited government planners to setting national economic objectives and gave
industrial managers wider leeway in deciding what to produce and in what amounts.
Prices were more closely related to supply and demand, and some small businesses
were allowed to be operated for profit.
But although the number of private
companies increased, industrial changes bogged down, while more radical measures
met conservative resistance.

Gorbachev fostered better relations with Western countries, notably by
signing arms-reduction treaties with the United States in 1987 and 1991.
He
withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988-89 and then re-established
relations with China.
He accepted the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern
Europe, agreed to the reunification of Germany in 1990, and recognized the
independence of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in 1991.

At home, Gorbachev began far-reaching political, social, and economic reforms
under the name of perestroika (restructuring).
He
called for glasnost (openness) in discussions of Soviet
domestic problems, greater involvement of citizens in the government, and
a major reorganization of the economy.
In 1990 he was elected Soviet president
by the Congress of People's Deputies.

The Fall of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev's reforms resulted
in fundamental changes in Soviet domestic and foreign affairs.
But his economic
reforms failed to revive the economy, which was close to collapse.

In 1991, the last year of the Soviet Union's existence, Gorbachev tried
desperately to negotiate a new union treaty between the central government
and the remaining republics.
His efforts, however, antagonized Communist hard-liners,
who sought to overthrow his government in August 1991.
Although the coup failed,
Gorbachev, who was briefly held captive, saw his prestige and power diminished.
At the same time, the popularity of his chief rival, Boris Yeltsin, president
of the Russian republic (now the Russian Federation), had been greatly enhanced
by his defiance of the leaders of the coup.

In December 1991, in the wake of the failed coup, Yeltsin proclaimed the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as the successor to the Soviet Union.
The loosely knit Commonwealth now includes all the former Soviet republics
except the three Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which had
claimed their independence in September 1991.

On Christmas Day, 1991, Gorbachev formally announced his resignation.
The
Soviet Union had ceased to exist.